Pressed Leaves Frame

One of my favorite things to do in the fall is to go on little hikes to take pictures of the leaves + trees. This year as I was walking amount piles of bright colored foliage on the ground, I thought “there has to be someway to keep some of these and display them!”. The only thing I could think of was back in elementary school when we melted them between two pieces of wax paper to preserve them for our leaf projects and I knew that wasn’t going to work, lol. We have a lot of floating frames, which I personally love the look of so I had the idea to use those. They were on sale for 50% off so the frame was $8 but it was white and our downstair bathroom has a woodsy/autumn leave vibe to it in the fall. I thought about painting it or possibly using this woodgrain painting technique on it but I honestly didn’t have the time for all of that. Then, while wondering around Joanns, I spotted this tape which is made from actual wood and is AMAZING!

The first thing you’ll need to do (obviously) is collect some leaves. You can fill your frame with as many or as little as you like, I found a few that were really vibrant so I didn’t want to clutter things up too much but it gets hard when there’s so many too choose from!

Once you have your leaves, make sure they don’t have any water on them and then get your frame and tape ready.

I took the cardboard corners off the frame and wiped down both sides of the front piece of glass with windex. Then I laid the leaves right side down in the layout I wanted it. I then windex-ed one side of the back piece of glass and carefully laid it down onto the frame like so:

Now you’re good to go, unless you’re like me and don’t like a plain frame lol. Measure out a piece of the woodgrain tape the length of one side of the frame and use the cardboard it came with to mark a diagonal line for the corners. I don’t know what the line is there for but on the backing, there is a line that is in a spot to make your tape EXACTLY the width it needs to be! Cut that shorter side of the tape off, remove the backing and place it on the frame. Continue for the remaining three sides, lining up the tape in each corner.

If you’re feeling really ambitious, you can use the same technique to put tape over the inner edge of the frame and the outsides! The frame comes with some hangers but the thing I love about these frames you don’t even need to fuss with that. I put three small nails in the wall and rest the frame along the inside edge!

I worried that air would get into the frame and the leaves would dry up and lose color but we’re going on three weeks now and while they have dulled a little they’re still looking good!!